Somewhat grabbing centre stage is the news that SAND has just been awarded an Awards for All grant, hurrah. The news dropped in to our inbox yesterday as the Action Group arrived at the office for our monthly update – so perfect timing and fantastic news!

The Lottery Funded “Grains of SAND” project starts in January and will give us loads of scope to build on the upcoming Spirit of SAND Event on 17th October and develop resources to realise the theory that if service providers understand more about LGBT experiences, they are more likely to be able to provide an equitable and accessible service. Continue reading “Step out of that shadow”→

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Returning to our blog on a monthly basis helps to keep the list of things to do alive – note to self is to update the website in line with the progress on the action plan which we logged in February). The very big news this month is that SAND has been awarded a small grant from HealthWatch Shropshire to carry out some research with younger-older (aged 50+) LGBT people in the County. This is fantastic – our first grant and something to get our teeth into. Meanwhile we are busy looking at other funders to help us progress.

We are also now looking at events – something to ‘launch’ SAND within the LGBT community – and with those all important straight allies – this looks like it might happen in the Summer. It feels like it is about time to ‘get out there’ and now we seem to have plenty to say we feel the need to share it!

There are a couple of fun fundraising events in the pipeline too so a couple of the Action Group members are looking at those. These events are also planned to increase the profile of SAND – get the word out about the aims and build a bigger family. We are looking at individuals, businesses, local groups and drawing up some guidance notes to help us to communicate with each of these.

Alongside all this we have started developing some policies – members of the Action Group who already have things like Confidentiality Policies and Ethics Policies have shared these which has helped us to pull together something which makes sense for SAND. We looked at these at last week’s meeting and putting all our heads together led to some useful alterations. We are still working on a safe-guarding policy which a couple of the group have taken away to work on.

Looking more externally, SAND now has the beginnings of a presentation to take to organisations. It lasts about 20 minutes but add another 45 for the discussion and questions it provokes and we are selling this out for approx £50 – for a couple of the SAND Action Group to take it out in Shropshire. Anyone interested in booking this can contact us using the form below.

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This Blog records what is happening at which point of SAND’s development.